


They Brought Him Home

by EchoAnansi



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 03:06:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8384827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EchoAnansi/pseuds/EchoAnansi
Summary: It doesn't surprise her. There was only one way he was going to come home.





	

**Author's Note:**

> TFA Kinkmeme prompt: Kylo Ren + Leia - Ben comes home  
> OP commented: Break my goddamn heart
> 
> I have no idea if this is what they were looking for, but it wrote itself in less than an hour...

In the end, it didn't surprise her. After Han... She gave up hoping.

When they first return with him there is no hint about how or why his ship was there. They don't know why he was the only one on said ship. Or what he was doing alone on a known Resistance patrol route.

What they do know is that when Black Squadron approached and opened fire (because of course they would. It was Kylo Ren's ship. How could they not?); when they opened fire, there was no response. They shot the ship down and he never fired back.

According to all official reports, the pilot and sole occupant was dead in the cockpit by the time her pilots finished their careful approach. They report that they cannot tell if it was the wounds he received during the crash or the injuries he'd sustained before lifting off that killed him.

(She's only slightly surprised that the rumours circulating base in the following months seem to confirm this. Through her grief, she is glad for that small mercy.)

She sees Commander Dameron – Black Leader, he was there, he helped bring him down, and now looks empty, as if he expected more satisfaction now that the man who cracked his mind open can't anymore (she could have told him that achieving vengeance rarely brings the closure it seems to promise). She sees Poe at a loss for words. He looks at her like he wants to apologize in one instant and stand defiantly proud the next.

He stands at attention next to her as the rest of his squadron tow the broken but salvageable ship back to her base. As they wheel the gurney out, her son's still form formally laid out, mask and helm removed but black gloved hands wrapped carefully around the cracked remnants of a lightsaber.

It shouldn't have hurt as much as it did. She knew after Starkiller that it was the only way Ben would ever come home.

The only time General Organa cried where all the worlds could see was when they brought her son back under a funeral shroud.

 

(The ship is full of information. Marching orders, hierarchy, personnel files. Maps of supply routes, maps of training facilities (Finn confirms that each facility holds an entire generation of potential Stormtroopers.) Looking at the stunned data analysts as they decrypt the files she **understands** suddenly, so quickly it takes her breath away, that here lies enough information to cripple the First Order. With this information in the hands of the Resistance, it will never recover. Never become the Empire it dreams of being.

(Her heart breaks all over again when she thinks that maybe this was what her son intended from the beginning.)

 

(Luke never confirms her heart-broken musings. He never explains to her that in the old Order - back when there was a Temple, and a government to support them rather than a poorly hidden camp in a jungle - the final tests for potential Knights was making them choose between family or love ( _attachment_ ) and duty. Never tells her that when Han confronted Kylo Ren on Starkiller Base he was giving Ben a Trial of Light and Dark all wrapped up in one single death. Even he would have preferred it if Ben had been less a Jedi and more a son.)


End file.
